


all as hungry as the sea

by soundthebells (kosy)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Fluff, Getting Together, Kissing, Let's Get Some Fucking Happiness In Here Boys!, M/M, Pining, Set In Season Three Between MAG106 and MAG117, This Soap Opera You Call An Archive, basically i listened to season 4 and now i'm sad and i needed this, spoilers for seasons 1 2 and 3!!, the sort of repression you expect from tma canon except they actually address it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22343695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kosy/pseuds/soundthebells
Summary: Jon sighs and shakes his head again. “I don’t know how to—I found a tape, Martin, that’s all, and there was some, uh—God, does it really matter? Can we just—just keep on, keep taking statements and you can tell me what you actually came in here to talk to me about and—”“It really doesn’t matter what I came in here for; I’m worried about you now.”Jon shoves his hair back with one of his trembling hands, head dropping so Martin can’t see his eyes anymore, and that’s not right at all. “Don’t be.”
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 50
Kudos: 592





	all as hungry as the sea

**Author's Note:**

> just finished season 4 folks so here's some canon divergent fluff from season three! hope you enjoy!

Martin just wants to follow up on a statement he’d read earlier that week. _Honestly_ he does. He doesn’t have any ulterior motives, not that he has them normally. Just motives of the usual, entirely forgivable sort. But, fine, they’re still the type of motives he doesn’t particularly want people (or, really, not-people) peering into his head and seeing. Not that he’s got much choice as far as that goes. 

“Jon,” he calls out, rapping a knuckle three times against the sturdy wooden door to his boss’ office. He doesn’t expect an immediate answer. He never did, really, but it’s gotten far worse in recent months. It’s not uncommon for his knocks to go unanswered entirely, Jon being prone to getting wrapped up in the statements. Martin doesn’t really—he doesn’t really get it, with the statements, the power they exert over Jon, the way his eyes look both so hollow and so bright after recording one. Or he didn’t. He thinks he might be starting to now. 

At any rate, he doesn’t blame Jon for not noticing the quiet knocks much of the time. 

So he’s genuinely surprised when, barely a second later, it swings open slowly. The door’s open just wide enough to reveal a sliver of Jon’s face, one dark-shining eye blinking warily back out at him. “What d’you want, Martin?” He sounds… cosmically tired. Like he’s been walking for days and days and just wants to collapse in the dirt but nobody will let him. Like he’s been reading statements without pausing for breath all week. Like—well, like he hasn’t been sleeping, which is frankly far more likely. 

“Just wanted to follow up on a statement,” he rushes out, trying to edge his way through the door, but Jon doesn’t budge, just keeps fixing him with that intense gaze. Martin feels uncomfortably _read_ , like Jon is looking into his soul and finding it wanting. 

“Alright, then,” Jon says, but still doesn’t move. 

“Can I come into your office?” Martin prompts, and Jon startles and shuffles aside. 

“Sorry,” he mumbles, wandering back over to his desk and messing with the stacks of tapes piled there, stacking them up into teetering piles barely on the verge of falling over entirely. He keeps throwing Martin these—glances. Furtive and quick enough that Martin barely catches them out of the corner of his eye, but he _does_ catch them. His hands are shaking, too, as if he’s had too much coffee, but Jon doesn’t _drink_ coffee, so—

“Okay, what is it?” he demands, and Jon’s head snaps up as if he’s been struck. 

“I—what? I don’t—I don’t know what you’re t—”

“You’re a bad liar, Jon,” Martin says, voice more anxious than he’d like. “So tell me what’s going on.” If—if Jon’s hiding something from him, if he’s getting paranoid again, if he’s going to go rogue and start putting himself in danger—

Jon just looks at him, focused and dark in the way that makes the tips of Martin’s fingers tingle a little bit. “Martin.” 

“Jon.” He is not backing down on this one, not letting him change the subject to the archives, to the end of the world, to Martin going home for the night this time and getting some rest. He should let it go, maybe, for his own sake if nothing else, but. If. If there’s something wrong, he couldn’t live with not knowing, with just letting him go on hurting. 

“I found. A tape.” The words sound like they’re being pulled out of him, which almost makes Martin laugh. His eyes go unfocused for a second, like he’s trying to see something in the space between them, and then he shakes his head with a grimace. “Sorry. I was just—just looking.” 

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Martin says with a steel he didn’t know he even had within him, not when it came to Jon. 

Jon sighs and shakes his head again. “I don’t know how to—I found a tape, Martin, that’s all, and there was some, uh—god, does it really matter? Can we just—just keep on, keep taking statements and you can tell me what you _actually came in here to talk to me about_ and—” His voice pitches mean somewhere in there, going vicious and bitten-off, but Martin can’t even bring himself to care. 

“It really doesn’t matter what I came in here for; I’m worried about you now.”

Jon sweeps his hair back with one of his trembling hands, head dropping so Martin can’t see his eyes anymore, and that’s not right at all. “Don’t be.” 

_“Jon,”_ Martin repeats, and he takes a step closer. Jon flinches backward, fumbling for who even _knows_ what, a tape out of pure reflex, maybe, or just an excuse to run, so Martin does the only thing he can think to do. 

He catches Jon’s wrist. 

_“Tell me.”_ He wishes he could compel him. Or he doesn’t. He probably doesn’t.

Jon looks slowly between Martin’s hand and his eyes. His face, tight with anxiety and frustration and just plain confusion, slowly relaxes, but his eyes don’t change, dark and deep and captivating as ever. He’s—observing. Thinking, for once in his life, instead of recklessly throwing his body in front of whatever new threat is barreling at them all. His wrist feels oddly fragile beneath Martin’s palm, like his bones are hollow inside. Martin remembers the bird he’d rescued from blueberry netting when he was six, how it had thrashed in his hands and he’d almost cried as he tried so desperately to untangle it from the plastic wire wrapped around its throat. He could feel its fragility, too, as he’d hooked his too-large fingers under the netting at its neck and felt those thin, delicate vertebrae. It had screamed, and he’d begged it not to move so it didn’t hurt itself even worse, the sobs building in his chest until he’d finally pulled the rest of the netting off and let it go and then he cried as he watched it fly away. But Jon isn’t screaming, isn’t struggling. Just watching him, motionless, not pulling back. Something is building, deep in Martin’s chest, and he wonders if it will choke out whatever else is left in there, suffocate him. 

“Okay,” Jon says quietly. “Okay.” 

And then, in a clumsy, decisive movement, he lunges forward and kisses him. 

For a fraction of a second, it’s nearly awkward as Martin tries to balance and process and respond to the foreign sensation of Jon’s lips against his, fingers still wrapped around Jon’s wrist. But then Jon slips out of Martin’s grasp to wind lithe hands up in his short, curly hair, tugging slightly to keep him close, and Martin exhales a soft gasp and maneuvers them toward the desk, hands flitting to Jon’s waist and holding on gently, and he can feel Jon’s teeth against his bottom lip, hears him let out this shuddering sigh, and it’s all— 

It’s all kind of a lot. 

He pulls away just a little bit, and Jon makes a quiet, distraught noise but lets him go, eyes fluttering open slowly to meet Martin’s. He can see that Jon is very resolutely pretending he’s not at all blushing, so Martin tries his best to ignore it. 

“So,” Martin begins, and now Jon is definitely blushing, fingers fidgeting with the hair on the back of Martin’s neck. 

Jon doesn’t let him get any further than _so._ “I found a, uh, I found a tape. It’s. Hmm. It’s one of Melanie’s? About The Vast, and, the, uh, the Daedelus mission.” 

“Y-Yeah, I think I remember asking her to record that.” He nearly laughs at the absurdity of it all, talking casually about statements and cases and Entities five seconds after kissing the man he’s been almost certainly falling in love with for nearly three years. But, of course, it’s Jonathan Sims. How else could it possibly be? 

“In the, in the final comments, there’s this section where she’s talking to Basira and forgot to turn off the recorder—”

“Oh _God,”_ Martin groans, and drops his head onto Jon’s shoulder. He can feel Jon bark out a quiet laugh and hesitantly move a hand up and down Martin’s neck in an amused gesture of comfort. 

“Office gossip is, of course, highly unprofessional. Not that I’m in any position to be complaining,” Jon says in that tone that’s just a little to the left of seriousness, and Martin chuckles against Jon’s collarbone. He’s thankful, at least, that he didn’t reach into his mind and pull the knowledge out. Martin’s not actually—he isn’t sure if he could live with that, really. If the revelation that he was so fucking hopeless for this man was extracted from him. Far better that it all comes out almost normally, through nosy coworkers and overheard gossip. Jon hums softly, fingers flexing against Martin’s scalp, and he lifts his head to look at Jon again. 

The Archivist tips his head and laughs a little to himself again. “I don’t, uh, actually know what to do now,” he admits almost sheepishly. He looks so gentle, standing there, all wide eyes and flushed cheeks and stubble and upturned lips. 

“How about this?” Martin suggests, and when Jon opens his mouth to respond, he kisses him again, moving hands up to run over Jon’s shoulders, his ribs, his spine; he can feel every delicate bone and lean, knotted muscle, and it’s a goddamn miracle, touching this man he’s watched and wanted for so long. “Is this okay?” 

Jon nods breathlessly before rushing back in, hands cradling his face. He kisses intensely, though of course Martin shouldn’t have expected anything less from him. Jon kisses like he’s using his last breaths to do it, like he’s clawing his way out of the grave using him as a handhold, like he wants to encompass every part of him, knock every thought out of his burning mind except _Jon._ He kisses like it’s not a precursor to anything else, like the sublime point of it all is the kiss, that crystalline, perfect movement that would be just as beautiful in a moment or an eternity. Martin can feel Jon’s fingernails scratching across his neck, other hand latching onto his bicep. It teeters just on the edge of possessive, and Martin finds that he doesn’t mind that at all. He breaks away to press his lips against the corner of Jon’s mouth, just where his lips turn down when he’s trying to figure something out, then to the edge of his jaw over one of many faint scars. Jon exhales against his cheek, and Martin goes still, nose pressed into greying hair. 

“Jon, I—” He doesn’t even know where he’s going with that, doesn’t even know where to begin. The world is ending. Might end. It’s all rather up in the air. And he is painfully in love with the only man really capable of stopping it. 

“I know.” 

Martin laughs wryly, inhales. “No, you don’t, not this time.” Jon’s shampoo is nondescript, though he thinks he smells lavender. He wonders how he hadn’t noticed before.

“I suppose I don’t, no.” He hesitates. “Do you… _want_ to tell me?” 

“Yes. I do.” He closes his eyes. “Jon. I have to know if this is a—a one-time thing, a fluke. Because if it’s not, if it’s not something that’s gonna—” He grimaces, breathes in slowly and lets it out. Tries again. “It’s just that sometimes I want you so much my chest hurts.” 

An agonizing pause. “You should probably talk to a doctor about that,” Jon mumbles against his temple.

“Jon,” Martin says, pulls back. “I’m not joking.” 

Jon looks pained. “Martin, it’s not—you don’t know what I am.” His brow wrinkles, and he can see the worry line form between his eyebrows, so human it aches. A tape recorder whirs like a living thing on the desk. 

Martin looks at him for a long moment. “Yes, I do.” Jon shakes his head stubbornly, but Martin barrels on. “Alright, at first, maybe—maybe not. You didn’t either, though. And when we did know—I made the choice, okay, Jon? I _chose_ to keep wanting you. Knowing who and what you are, what you might become if you’re not careful enough. I chose this. Don’t _ever_ fucking imply that it wasn’t my choice. I want this. I want you.” 

Jon makes no reply, just tightens his grip and presses his forehead against Martin’s sternum. 

“Okay?” Martin asks, and Jon nods against him. 

“Yes,” Jon whispers, eyes shut tight. “Okay.” 

And it is.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! you can find me on tumblr at [@boneroutes](https://boneroutes.tumblr.com), where i'm rapidly becoming a tma blog. basically season 4 who? jon and martin killed the lonely via the power of true love right before the unknowing sooooooo... oh you haven't heard? tma is a romance. also i stole the title from twelfth night, i feel like i should mention that. and drop a comment/kudos if you liked this/feel inclined! thanks again <3


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